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Upon entering Massages Reduce Stress, guests are asked to remove their shoes. As they skate around the space in their socks or provided slippers, they can choose from 16 different massage modalities, including Swedish and hot-stone treatments as well as ones geared toward pregnant women and cancer patients. Body scrubs and nutrition advice from therapists supplement tissue work, with all treatments striving to lift away anxiety from clients’ bodies and send it into the atmosphere, where it will eventually plug up holes in the ozone layer. Therapists also devote themselves to their community by participating in local fundraisers, grand openings, and employee-appreciation events.

Supreme Golf makes maintaining an oft-pricey golf addiction a bit easier on the wallet by granting golfers discounts at golf courses and golf schools, as well as cutting the price of books, golf clubs, and nutritional supplements. Golfers can enjoy relaxing, discounted rounds at area courses in cities across the country including such area courses as Bear Creek Golf Club in Dallas, Gateway National Golf Links in St. Louis and St. Andrews Golf and Country Club in Atlanta, soaking in the sights and badgering local pros for analysis of the annual caddie draft.

Since 1932, Firestone Wentworth Tire Services talented mechanics have outfitted wheels with road-ready tires. Armed with an inventory that boasts 14 brands, including Pirelli, Michelin, and Continental, the store’s stock includes a wide range of dimensions. The helpful sales staff ensures clients find the best match for their needs, keeping cars well-treaded, safe, and smelling of fresh rubber. The company’s automotive purview encompasses more than just the tires. Routine oil changes, roadside assistance, or even full transmission replacements all fall within the skilled, on-staff technicians' areas of expertise.

Since taking off the training wheels in 1972, Cycles N Sports has been a full-service bike shop, wrenching two-wheel wisdom into each bike it sells and service it renders. A staff of riding enthusiasts helps customers navigate the shop’s inventory, comprising spoked specimens from such major brands as Electra, Townie, Felt, Giant, Fly, and Stolen, as well as many specialty models. Whether you arrive looking for a bike or parts for a BMX bike, road bike, mountain bike, or the makeshift ramp from the roof of your house, the staff can happily assist and answer questions.

Water's Edge Golf Club's championship-style golf course flaunts bent-grass greens and fairways lined with canopy-grown trees along 18 challenging holes of picturesque greenery. Measuring 6,904 yards from the back tees and 5,332 yards from the forward tees, the playable holes allow golfers of all skill levels to enjoy engaging in a round or flirting with eligible sand traps. Jump into a golf cart to drive, chip, and putt your way across natural grasses, protected wetlands, and dense forest thickets for two rounds on the beautiful par 72 course. Sitting on the banks of the Cal-Sag Channel, the club is located 30 minutes outside of downtown Chicago, allowing players a peaceful reprieve from the hustle and bustle of the city and the ball-guzzling potholes that frequently spoil games played on Wacker Drive.

Bleaching your hair gray isn’t just eye-catching—it’s also a middle finger to the anti-aging industry. Barbara and Barbara owner Kara Wabbell shows us how it’s done.
To some people, bleaching your hair gray in your 20s must seem as sensible as yanking out all your teeth and buying dentures for fun. After all, isn’t the entire beauty-industrial complex geared toward reversing, or at least slowing down, the aging process—not skipping ahead 30 years? But of course that defiance of expectations is part of the appeal of the trend, which has seen granny-gray tresses pop up on everyone from Gareth Pugh and Giles Deacon models to teenage style blogger Tavi Gevinson.
"As men age and their hair begins to silver, they are typically perceived as sophisticated, wise, and successful,” says Sarah Brewster, a 28-year-old clinical research coordinator living in Humboldt Park, who sports a Miley Cyrus–esque undercut with shaved sides and a tuft of 7-inch long, gray-colored hair on top. “But the beauty standard for women is to dye over their graying hair in order to obtain a youthful look…The gray-hair trend, for me, is a rebellion against this gender norm.”
Sarah finds it’s hard for many people to process the look. "I get mistaken for an old woman all the time! Especially if someone sees me from behind, " she says. But that doesn't stop her from wearing her cut with pride. Aside from the social statement it makes, Sarah insists she finds it “aesthetically appealing. It's unique, it’s exciting, and it looks awesome.”
But if the contrarian appeal of gray hair is understandable, the process of creating it was still a mystery to me. For help, I turned to Sarah’s stylist, Kara Wabbell, the owner of Logan Square’s Barbara and Barbara.
Reach for the Bleach
Trying to dye your hair gray is a mistake, since the hair will lose its color over time due to stress, pollution, and other factors. That’s why stylists don’t dye, but rather bleach hair to obtain a gray color. How dark your virgin color is—Sarah’s roots are about a Level 4—determines how long your hair must process under the bleach.
"It takes a lot of patience," says Kara, whose clients have requested the bleached-gray look for as long as she’s been a hairdresser (about 10 years). In fact, she says most appointments take up to four hours. During that time, Kara concocts a specialized formula of bleach, toners, and developers for each client and relies on her intuition (and years of practice) to estimate how long the ends and the roots should be bleached.
After the Appointment
Though the lengthy process does require quite a bit of art and science, maintaining the gray hue in-between visits isn’t as tough.
“I use purple shampoo,” Sarah says. Kara adds, “Like the kind little old white-haired ladies use.”
Purple shampoo. Seriously?
Kara explains: "You are essentially turning your hair to cheesecloth. It [becomes] so porous it soaks up anything, like hair oil, street pollution, and dirt. So you have to use the purple shampoo…to keep your hair that bright, moonlight white color."
So, what happens when someone doesn’t want gray hair anymore? You just dye over it, right?
“You shave it off,” Kara says matter-of-factly. Dyeing over a large area of bleached-gray hair can be a recipe for disaster because the follicles no longer hold pigment. That’s why some bright-blonde girls end up with a purple tint after box-dyeing their hair brown.
Still, not everyone has to shave their head to start over. Kara says some hair can be salvaged. It just has to happen in steps, and it needs to be done by a professional stylist.
The Real Reason to Do It
Anyone who sports a hairdo that makes them look older, takes up to four hours to create, and requires special shampoo to maintain is clearly going to a lot of trouble to make a statement. But the message may not be as simple as you think. For all the talk of defying social mores, Sarah says she has more personal reasons for choosing the look.
“I don't have grandiose ideas that my gray hair is changing the way society views aging and beauty in our culture,” Sarah says. “Yet my gray hair did help me change the way that I view my aging and my beauty. To be able to walk down the street with a buzzed-gray cut and to feel confident and sexy, well, that's just plain empowering."
Photos: Stephanie Anderson, Groupon